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Girl in Glass : How My "Distressed Baby" Defied the Odds, Shamed a CEO, and Taught Me the Essence of

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Deanna Fei was just five-and-a-half months pregnant when she inexplicably went into labor. Minutes later, she met her tiny baby who clung to life support inside a glass box. Fei was forced to confront terrifying questions: How to be the mother of a child she could lose at any moment. Whether her daughter would survive another day--and whether she should. But as she watched her daughter fight for her life, Fei discovered the power of the mother-child bond at its most elemental.

A year after she brought her daughter home from the hospital, the CEO of AOL--her husband's employer--blamed the beautiful, miraculously healthy little girl for a cut in employee benefits and attached a price tag to her life, using a phrase, "distressed babies," that set off a national firestorm.

Girl in Glass is the riveting story of one child's harrowing journey and a powerful distillation of parenthood. With incandescent prose and an unflinching eye, Fei explores the value of a human life: from the spreadsheets wielded by cost-cutting executives to the insidious notions of risk surrounding modern pregnancy; from the wondrous history of medical innovation in the care of premature infants to contemporary analyses of what their lives are worth; and finally, to the depths of her own struggle to make sense of her daughter's arrival in the world. Above all, Girl in Glass is a luminous testament to how love takes hold when a birth defies our fundamental beliefs about how life is supposed to begin.

In October 2012 Deanna Fei was just five months pregnant when she suddenly and inexplicably went into labor. Minutes later, she met her tiny baby who clung to life support inside a glass box. Fei was forced to confront terrifying questions: How to be the mother of a child she could lose at any moment. Whether her daughter would survive each day-and whether she should. But as she watched her indomitable daughter fight for her life, Fei discovered the power of the mother-child bond at its most elemental.

In February 2014, a year after her daughter came home from the hospital, the beautiful, miraculously healthy little girl was blamed by CEO Tim Armstrong for a cut in AOL employee benefits. This egregious violation of privacy enabled the colleagues of Fei's husband to attach a price tag to their daughter's care; sparked intense debates across national media; and eventually propelled Fei to come forward to restore the humanity of a child who had overcome so much, only to be scapegoated as a drag on the company bottom line.

In Girl in Glass-a searing, luminous portrait of her daughter's harrowing journey and her own struggles and joys as a mother-Fei underscores the gross injustice of putting anyone on the defensive for suffering a medical crisis; humanizes the perilous state of individual privacy versus corporate indifference; and reflects on the value of a human life. ButGirl in Glass is most of all a testament to the fierceness and endurance of parental love.